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A Fitchburg man's mission to tour Europe's great stadiums

By Sean Sweeney, Correspondent

Updated:
04/02/2013 06:51:55 AM EDT

COURTESY PHOTO / NATHAN NEWCOMBE
Fitchburg native Nathan Newcombe is making the most of his semester abroad by visiting some of Europe's most famous soccer stadiums. Here, he poses during a tour of Wembley Stadium in London. The 90,000-seat stadium is the second-largest in Europe.

For most American sports fans, a stadium bucket list more than likely includes trips to Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field, Notre Dame Stadium, Cooperstown, Canton and the Rose Bowl.

For Fitchburg native Nathan Newcombe, the list is just a bit longer.

Newcombe is studying abroad at the College of International Studies in Madrid, Spain, this semester, and during his down time, he's already taken in several soccer games in stadiums that fans of the beautiful game would recognize.

Newcombe, a former baseball player for Fitchburg High and a 2011 graduate, decided to take in the matches due to his newfound love of the sport the rest of the world calls football.

"Over the last few years I've gotten a lot more into football," he said by phone from a youth hostel in London. "During my freshman year (at Endicott College in Beverly), my roommate played, so it's become something I really enjoy. The stadiums here and in Europe are just amazing.

"My eyes have truly been opened by English football this week."

He said he started truly following the sport during the 2006 FIFA World Cup, held in Germany, and boasts Tottenham Hotspur F.C. of London as his favorite football club. Spurs midfielder Gareth Bale, a Welsh international, is his favorite footballer.

"Playing FIFA (the video game) helped me really learn the game and the teams and players, and now I've carried that more into real life," he said.

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Earlier this year, Newcombe started his stadium tour with a trip to the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, home of perennial European powerhouse Real Madrid C.F. That day, he saw the Los Blancos first team play Valencia C.F. in the Copa del Rey, Spain's domestic soccer tournament, which is comparable to England's FA Cup or the United States' U.S. Open Cup.

The Bernabeu seats 85,454.

"It's grand," Newcombe said of his first impressions of the stadium. "Big, bright lights, and seating that is very steep that makes it just feel grand."

This past week, Newcombe went to England and Scotland as part of Spain's spring break. Besides visiting Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square and other British landmarks, he also took in a little bit of football. Much to his dismay, he didn't get to see any Barclay's Premier League matches while in England -- spring break coincided with FIFA's March international break, where top-level players are released from their clubs to their home nations for World Cup qualifiers and friendly matches. He did, however, get to see lower-league football on the English pyramid.

Tickets to lower-league matches are usually easier to snap up than to Premier League or Championship contests, the top two levels in English football.

Last weekend, he traveled to Barnet's Underhill Stadium, where he saw a snowy scoreless draw in a League Two -- fourth-division football which is competitively on par with our North American Soccer League -- matchup with Cheltenham Town.

Newcombe said that it was a bit of culture shock at first, as Underhill is a cozy, 6,200-seat stadium that is one of the smallest in England's Football League, made up of the top four leagues in the pyramid. Newcombe sat in the South Stand of this 106-year-old stadium, with that stand containing 11 rows of seats -- not exactly The Fort, the die-hard supporter section at Gillette Stadium when the New England Revolution play during the MLS season.

"It felt like I was going back to the beginnings of football," Newcombe said of that particular experience, "where it wasn't about the stadium but the football on the field and the fans in the stands, not how big or how state of the art the stadium is.

"It was something that was completely new, with no security at the entrance that caused a line. Just buy your ticket, walk in and find your seat," he said.

Two days later, Newcombe saw a match at one of the newer and larger football grounds in London: the 60,000-plus capacity Emirates Stadium in Ashburton Grove, North London, home of English powerhouse Arsenal F.C. With the Gunners' first team spread out across the globe on international duty, the Arsenal Reserves squad -- which, ironically, regularly plays its matches at Underhill -- took over the seven-year-old stadium and welcomed Russian outfit CSKA Moscow for a quarterfinal match in the NextGen tournament.

Sitting in the famous North Bank, Newcombe watched as Arsenal knocked off the Russians on Serge Gnabry's 56th-minute tally, setting up a semifinal matchup against Chelsea F.C.

When asked what he thought of The Emirates, Newcombe said the first word that came to mind was "majestic."

"I love how the stands and the roof were designed and the pitch looks absolutely perfect," Newcombe said. "The (Reserve) game tonight was awesome. Maybe about half of the lower tier was filled, but the spirit was still there with constant singing and cheering. Arsenal's U19s outplayed CSKA's from beginning to end controlling the ball easily and making tactically sound runs and passes.

"After seeing a League Two game earlier this week and now seeing Arsenal's reserve side, the reserves would run any League Two team completely out of the stadium. Every player showed skill and it was pretty to watch."

In between the matches, he managed to take tours of The Emirates, as well as tours of Wembley Stadium, home of the England national team, and Chelsea's Stamford Bridge. He also visited White Hart Lane, home of Arsenal's bitter rivals Tottenham Hotspur, who make up one of the sport's all-time great rivalries known as the North London Derby; The Lane and The Emirates are four miles apart -- the same distance between Crocker and Doyle Fields.

"It's a vintage stadium, not the new state-of-the-art building like Arsenal has, but still has a certain charm about it," Newcombe said of The Lane.

In addition, Newcombe made a visit to the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, better known to Grand Slam fans on our side of the Atlantic Ocean as Wimbledon. On a pop culture note, he visited King's Cross Station as he spread out across London. King's Cross, a major transportation hub, is the site of the Harry Potter series' Platform 9 3/4.

When Newcombe returns to Spain next week, he said he hopes to get to France in April to see Paris Saint-Germain, a club in France's Ligue 1 that now boasts former Los Angeles Galaxy star David Beckham on its roster, at the Parc des Princes, the fourth-largest stadium in France. In addition, he hopes to see Atletico Madrid play a match at the Vicente Calderon Stadium.

Newcombe also wants to make a trip to the Camp Nou, home of F.C. Barcelona, should he have the time.

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